‘Lawrence W. Reed’ Archives
Wanted: A Healthy Dose of Humility
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed An awful lot of people in this world are really puffed up about themselves. One of the character traits I wish were much more widely practiced these days is good old-fashioned humility. T. S. Eliot said, “Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than [...]
Missing Samuel Tilden
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed If you’re under 50 you probably don’t remember when telephone “numbers” weren’t all numbers. From the 1920s until the mid-1960s most phone “numbers” began with two letters corresponding to certain digits on a common telephone dial. KL7-1234, for example, was read as “Klondike [...]
Dusting Off a Man and His Classic
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed In 1870 the sultan of Turkey gave a book by a Scotsman to his entire entourage of top-ranking officials. The Khedive of Egypt had the same work inscribed and painted on the wall of the Royal harem. Two years later the Meiji dynasty ordered the book to be issued throughout Tokyo’s school [...]
What’s Wrong with Government Funding of the Arts
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed People who oppose Soviet-style collective farms, government subsidies to agriculture, or public ownership of grocery stores because they want the provision of food to be a private matter in the marketplace are generally not dismissed as uncivilized or uncaring. Hardly anyone would claim that [...]
Liberty and the Power of Ideas
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence W. Reed A belief that I stress again and again is that we are at war—not a physical, shooting war, but nonetheless a war that is fully capable of becoming just as destructive and just as costly. The battle for the preservation and advancement of liberty is a battle not against personalities [...]
Competition and Monopoly: A Refresher
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed “Gym Now Stresses Cooperation, Not Competition,” blared a headline in the New York Times a decade ago. The story was about an elementary school where “confrontational” games, team sports, and elimination rounds were changed or scrapped so that differences between students’ athletic [...]
The Gasoline Demagogues Will Be Back
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed Here we go again. In late February gasoline prices across America were surpassing $3 a gallon. Forecasters are advising us to expect $4 by summer, maybe higher. So be prepared for something else with it all: the broken-record rhetoric of anti-market types about “gouging.” It’ll be [...]
FEE Is Expanding to Atlanta
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence Reed From its founding in 1946 until 2010, the Foundation for Economic Education had one office: its headquarters near the Hudson River in Irvington, New York, less than one hour from New York City. Now, I am proud to announce, it has a second home in the heart of the South. In early May 2010, FEE [...]
Scotland: Seven Centuries since William Wallace
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence W. Reed I am an American of Scottish extraction, and few things stir my blood more than the colorful history of my ancestral homeland. Through the centuries, rugged Scots stand tall among those heroes who gave every ounce of their lives for such noble ideals as liberty, independence, and [...]
Good Economists, Bad Economists, and Walmart
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Lawrence W. Reed Good economists are seldom popular with the political class. This is not unique to democratic systems; dictators like good economists even less. Why? As a rule, politics doesn’t educate. It obfuscates, pontificates, and prevaricates. It often seeks to advance the interests of the few at [...]
